


what if she needs us?

by timelxrd



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Fluff, Gen, One Shot, Pre-Episode: Revolution of the Daleks, sonya khan being the best sister, yaz is struggling without the doctor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:56:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28462743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timelxrd/pseuds/timelxrd
Summary: “Back to work again?” Hakim poses, arms folded over his well-worn grey dressing gown. He raises a hand to rub sleep from his eyes and Yaz momentarily envies the way a good night’s rest softens his features where hers are hard and worn from a lack thereof.“Yeah,” Yaz answers, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “I told you; this case is huge. It’s going to take some time.”She’s only half lying, after all.The sleeping bag sprawled across the blue linoleum of the TARDIS floor mocks her from three blocks away.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 22
Kudos: 71





	what if she needs us?

**Author's Note:**

> hope you're all staying safe !!! i hope u all have a happy new year <3
> 
> tw:// panic attack

It’s harder to slip away in the mornings. 

Unseen; unnoticed; unacknowledged; all three virtually impossible over steaming coffee and half-eaten toast and a space shared. 

The digits on the microwave revise themselves. 

7:46AM. __

Yaz had not planned to return to the flat the night prior. 

It’s funny that. She used to call this  _ home _ . 

Now, it’s merely another series of rooms. Before the sofa and behind Yaz’s eyes, the Doctor gesticulates with her runaway hands and dons a navy bumbag. She commends Hakim’s collection of rubbish and grins at the mention of a conspiracy. 

When Yaz peers over the rim of her mug, the mirage disappears into thin air. The whisper of a smile on her lips follows suit. 

She’s shrugging her rucksack over her shoulder and adjusting her jacket ten five minutes later when a set of footsteps find her. The tentative nature of them makes Yaz pause and turn with a well-practiced neutral expression.

“Back to work again?” Hakim poses, arms folded over his well-worn grey dressing gown. He raises a hand to rub sleep from his eyes, and Yaz momentarily envies the way a good night’s rest softens his features where hers are hard and worn from a lack thereof. 

“Yeah,” Yaz answers, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “I told you; this case is huge. It’s going to take some time.” 

She’s only half lying, after all. 

The sleeping bag sprawled across the blue linoleum of the TARDIS floor mocks her from three blocks away. 

Like a fly, she bats it away. 

“Will you be home ton—” 

“I’m staying at the Doctor’s.”

“Right. And she’s alright with you staying so often?”

Yaz thinks of the cold and empty; the unemotional blue and silver unlike her friend’s own ship. “‘Course. She’s helping with the investigation.”

“Yaz—” 

“I’ve got to go, Dad. I don’t wanna be late.” Keys clashing, Yaz lifts her brows in barely concealed impatience. If she’s quick enough, she might not witness the way the words cut across her father’s torn expression. 

On this occasion, she doesn’t have such luck. 

“We barely see you these days, Yasmin,” Hakim starts in an oh-so-familiar pattern of statements. 

Instinctively, Yaz closes her palm around the door handle at her back. 

“It’s a—”

“An important case, we know.” Hakim’s voice is soft in its suffocation. “Just don’t let it take over everything else happening in your life, alright? It’s just work.”

Yaz wants to scream,  _ it's not just work. _

Yaz wants to scream,  _ what else is happening in my life without her?  _

Yaz wants to scream,  _ what life? _

Yaz wants to scream. 

Instead, she turns the handle and steps through the door with a muted sigh, “See you, Dad.”

—

Three blocks and two zebra crossings (or two thousand, nine hundred and eighty-two individual steps) make up Yaz’s well-worn journey to her remaining solace. 

Post-it notes cling to every available surface of the console room other than the floor, where Yaz dumps her rucksack beside a dishevelled sleeping bag and a star-dusted pillow she ought to consider washing.  _ Ought _ being the operative word. 

With a fresh newspaper in hand, Yaz leans against the main component with a pen and a pack of sticky notes to scan through its contents for anything remotely suspicious. 

Apart from a suspicious street artist copying Banksy’s works with awful similarity, nothing reaches out from the pages to grasp at Yaz’s searching gaze. 

Three more thorough perusals. Still, nothing. 

The ship around her bristles with something akin to a snicker. Or perhaps she’s just hearing things. 

In impatient frustration, Yaz casts the paper to a far corner of the room, pages dispersing throughout its uncoordinated flight until a sea of grey and white lay scattered across silver.

Yaz’s groan of irritation doesn’t breach the double doors. 

“Fat lot o’ good you are,” she grumbles to that which mocks her; a scanner blinking with the same circular symbols as they’ve been presenting every day for the last ten months. “Thought y’were meant to be connected to time lords or something?”

A spare pen — one she’d used up entirely during a manic research episode which drummed up no further results — greets the toe of her Doc Martens and skids across the floor towards a gap between the centre console and the metal grates surrounding its base. Unseen. Lost amongst wires and mechanical parts far beyond Yaz’s knowledge. 

The Doctor would understand. 

The Doctor would pick apart every wire, every join, every tank of golden fuel to fetch Yaz her pen back in spite of its lack of ink. 

And she’d take great pleasure in reconnecting every component back up, too.

Sinking to the floor beside her blue sleeping bag and a pillar harder and sharper in its stature than the soft golden crystals of the Doctor’s TARDIS, Yaz tilts her head back against the pale metal and wilts under domed ceilings. 

“Aren’t you bored, just — just bein’ parked up here for so long with no one to pilot you? You know, if you just  _ took me to her _ , like I’ve asked so many times, you would never be bored again. She’d get you out there in no time, back in space. Mate, you’d love travellin’ with her.

I know I did. And I miss it, every day. I miss  _ her _ . Even her weird obsession with putting everything she sees in her mouth. So can y’just grow some metal tits and help me find her?”

Numb to the familiar track salty tears take down her cheek, Yaz sniffs and drags her knees to her chest. “Please.” 

Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen minutes pass with no response from the sentient ship around her. 

Under the weight of its stubborn walls and uncaring, uphased reaction, Yaz crumbles again.

And again, the ship offers no support other than to echo her splintering pieces and persistent tears and put them on display like the circular alcoves in the walls. Obese pools of tears; every one of them. Derisive and infantilising her. 

Lost to the recesses of her palms and the strain she puts on her jaw to keep sobs from bay, Yaz doesn’t notice the polite  _ knockknockknock _ on the front door until it resonates through for a fourth time. 

Head darting up, Yaz eyes the scanner— unchanged. 

But — that doesn’t make sense. 

How could anyone be knocking on the door of a house which doesn’t exist?

Unless… 

A tiny root of hope sprouts flowers beneath her ribs. “Doctor?”

On her rush to the door, she doesn’t care to wipe her cheeks dry or disguise her fissured composure. 

The door creaks open to reveal — oh. 

Wrapped up in a green parka and a pair of ripped jeans, Sonya shivers just outside. 

“Fair play — the Doctor has a pretty nice house. Room for a little one in there with you two so I can tell her myself?” 

It takes longer than she’d like for Yaz’s senses to return. 

Long enough, and then some, for her sister to wriggle her way past the door and duck under her arm. 

At the same time as Sonya breathes a shocked,  _ “ _ Yaz, what the _ hell—”,  _ Yaz blinks back to herself and reaches out to grasp hopelessly at her jacket. 

“Sonya, what are you doing? You can’t be in here. You just can’t. How did you even know I was—” 

“You’ve been comin’ here instead of work for the last month, Yaz.” 

“You  _ followed  _ me?”

“You didn’t exactly give me much choice,” mutters Sonya, wrangling out of Yaz’s grip when her eyes catch on the sea of notes pinned to the back wall. Stubborn, she ignores the rest of Yaz’s dwindling pleas for her to leave. “What even is this place? Like — I get she’s a bit weird, but she really didn’t have to take the interior design this far.”

Plucking a sticky note away from the screen is what eventually bristles Yaz enough to step in. 

Snatching the pale green paper from her hands, Yaz stands her weakened ground. “You need to leave.” 

“What’s really goin’ on here, Yaz?” 

Like a novice puppeteer is in control of her inner workings, Yaz’s lips part but no words form on her tongue. 

“Where’s the Doctor? If you’re spending so much time with her, how come we haven’t seen her in months?” 

Sonya crouches to fish another coloured note up, expression torn between accusation and concern and, if Yaz looks close enough, betrayal. “This is all your handwriting, Yaz.” 

“Stop it,” Yaz supplies feebly. “Just go. We’re busy.” 

Caught between Sonya’s painted nails, the next scrap of paper consists entirely of the words  _ please come home, Doctor _ . “She’s not here, is she?” 

“We’re working on a —” 

“A case, yeah?” Sonya shakes her head, setting the post-it down on the console and turning to Yaz in earnest. “Sorry, but I’m callin’ bullshit.” 

Shoving her hands into the pockets of her coat, Sonya rounds the console likely in search of a nook or cranny wherein the Doctor could hide. 

And of course, she comes up empty. 

Because the Doctor isn’t here. She hasn’t been for a long time. 

“Doctor?” her sister calls in stubborn ignorance of the way Yaz freezes up. “Doctor, if you’re here, come on out.”

A solid pillar greets her back and fresh breathlessness greets Yaz’s lungs in tandem. Are the walls closing in? Sonya isn’t any closer — perhaps it’s just her skull nestling closer to her brain with every mention of her name. “Stop.” 

Back to her, Sonya shrinks at the sight of blue nylon sprawled on the floor in replication of a bed. “Why lie, Yaz?” 

Disappointment shrouds her like a swarm of wasps, aiming solely for her heaving chest and trembling lungs. Each inhale takes all her effort, so every exhale is a triumph. She doesn’t remember sliding to the floor until she’s able to drag her knees up and duck her head between them. 

“Stop it. Just… stop,” she croaks. The walls are heavy in their collision. Even the circular grooves have sealed up and pressed against her toes and her sides. 

Counting on her fingers doesn’t help, since they’re glued fast to her scalp. 

“Yaz?” Sonya’s voice is distant. She’s but a murmur in the storm hacking and battering at Yaz’s nerve endings. “ _ Shit.”  _

_ She’s not here, is she? _

Yaz grits her teeth and clenches her jaw, fingers searching for relief along her scalp; a seam wherein the eye of the hurricane lays dormant and unyielding. Her lungs cry out and her facade crumbles with them. 

_ Why lie, Yaz? _

There are hands on her shaking shoulders, but they’re not  _ hers _ . They’re not the Doctor’s. 

Because the Doctor isn’t here. 

“ _ Yaz _ .” 

“Stop,” Yaz gasps into the space between her knees.

“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I’ll stop. I promise.” 

Smaller hands try to peel Yaz’s fingers away from her smarting head to little success. Sonya’s voice is closer, now, and a surprising few degrees softer. “Yaz, can you try —”

“I can’t.”

She can hear Sonya swallow. Yaz yearns for enough breathing room to copy the motion. 

Like the end of a film reel, the edges of her vision grow misty and dirty and speckled with black dots. 

A hand finds her back and a warm cheek finds her shoulder in a hold distantly reminiscent of Yaz’s youth. “Yes, you can. C’mon, say them with me. Sonya, Hakim, Najia, Nani. Sonya, Hakim…  _ come on _ , Yaz.” 

“S—” Yaz’s next breath gets caught up in her throat and she coughs dryly. “Sonya, Hakim…” 

“Najia, Nani,” Sonya continues in tandem. “And back to the start again. Keep going, Yaz. I’m here and you’re okay.” 

With a rustle of clothes and some slow maneuvering, Yaz’s forehead finds the solid curve of Sonya’s shoulder. She clutches at the seam of her sister’s parka while she reigns in her exhalitions, eyes closed tight in embarrassment. 

If she doesn’t see the anguished look painting Sonya’s features, she can comfort herself in its non-existence. In the meantime, her chest aches and her lungs feel too heavy for her feeble support. 

“Sonya, Hakim, Najia…”

Fingers find her scalp and sooth the half-crescents left behind in Yaz’s distress. “That’s right. Keep going. Is it working?”

Heart or mind? Yaz isn’t sure. 

Her breaths are still hungry. Each greedy inhalation trips over itself until gasps turn to restrained cries and Sonya stiffens against her in muted surprise. 

“Yaz?” She sounds so  _ sad.  _

The tail end of Yaz’s next shuddering gasp falls into the reigns of a sob at the knowledge that she’d caused that. She’d forced Sonya to confront her because she’s so lost in denial and refusal that she can’t find a way out. She’d made Sonya coax panic and alarm from her lungs and brain just so Yaz could slip from her blissful ignorance and realise what’s really happening. 

“She— ,” Yaz croaks against the faux-fur lining Sonya’s hood. “She’s not here. She’s g— gone. I thought she’d come back. I thought she’d find a way out. Sonya, I think she’s —” 

A firm, squeezing hug and secure arms around her shoulders cut the rest of her sentence short and disperse it into the brown and green of her sister’s jacket. Yaz pants shakily against the material, cheeks wet alongside the dampened fibres. 

When it’s not so difficult to encourage air through her lungs any longer, Yaz straightens up enough to pull back and wipe at her cheeks.

She only serves to dishevel whatever makeup remains in place, if Sonya’s teary chuckle and nudging hands are anything to go by. Sweeping her thumbs under her eyes and glossing over the corners, Sonya shakes her head in teasing bemusement. “Your mascara is everywhere, sis.”

Yaz’s voice is but a dry husk when she finds it. Casting her damp eyes to the metal floor so to escape Sonya’s heavy gaze, she toys at a fraying thread on her sleeve. “I’m sorry.”

Patiently, Sonya shuffles up to lean against the same pillar keeping Yaz’s heavy body upright, and, relocated to Yaz’s side, she provides a shoulder Yaz can rest her head upon. 

“I’m sorry I lied,” Yaz whispers hoarsely, “I didn’t think.” 

“Didn’t think I would notice? Or care?”

“No! — No. I dunno. I think I hoped you wouldn’t. I think I just — I just didn’t want to exist for a while. This was where I could do that. And I’m looking for her. I’m trying to find a sign,  _ anything _ , that she’s not —” 

“Hey. No, don’t cry. Let’s not — let’s not go there, alright? Not right now,” Sonya supplies, slipping an arm around Yaz’s elbow to seek out a fidgeting hand. 

“Why don’t you just look for her at home? Why’d you have to come to this weird house with a computer in the middle of the living room?”

That coaxes a huff of amusement. “Sonya, it’s not a house. It’s a ship, just like the Doctor’s. That’s why I’ve spent so much time here. I feel closer to her, somehow.” 

“Funny one,” Sonya deadpans, casting a double-take towards the console. “Weird lookin’ ship, Yaz.” 

“I’m not joking,” replies Yaz, turning her head to display her earnestness. Sonya’s pupils grow wider when the borrowed TARDIS murmurs its agreement. “How d’you think I used to travel around so much?”

“I’m… going to process that later.” Sonya glances wearily from column to console, then across to the panel decorated in notes. 

The quiet which follows is full of questions, on Sonya’s part. Yaz can almost hear them rattling around in her sister’s closed mouth. 

But her lips are pursed, so Yaz takes her chance. 

“I lost my job, Sonya,” she admits. “They suspended me, first, because I kept getting distracted on the job. As soon as I saw someone who looked like her, I’d just — I couldn’t help myself. I’d follow ‘em and it would never be her. It kept happening. And they started to notice. Started givin’ me graveyard shifts or office work. 

When I were getting too slack even with  _ paperwork _ , they told me I was on my final warning. A day later, there was a sightin’ of something in the sky over the hills and I  _ had _ to check it out. I wasn’t going to risk it in case she was back. In case that was her. ‘Cause I didn’t turn up to work, though, Sunder called that evening and sacked me on the spot.

That’s when I started coming here more. I’ve barely left since.” Yaz exhales, slow and long, and wilts under the gaze burning holes in the side of her head. Despite the relief which comes with her confession, shame still curls its grubby hands around her gut and forces her gaze southward. 

Sonya’s hold is stubborn around her fingers. That’s something, at least. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

Her sister sighs. When Yaz chances a glance her way, Sonya doesn’t seem surprised. If anything, she looks like she’d expected the reality behind Yaz’s secrecy. 

“I just need to find out what happened, Sonya. Graham and Ryan are carrying on like it never happened, but it’s all I can think about.” 

“Everyone copes in different ways, Yaz,” Sonya defends gently. “But — uh — I won’t tell mum and dad.” 

Yaz baulks, turning to her. “You won’t?”

“Not ‘till you’re ready,” Sonya confirms. “But can I make a request?” 

“Thank you.” Yaz sits up a little straighter, comes off a little stronger. The weight on her shoulders lessens enough for her bones to cry their delight and ease their employment. “And yeah. Of course. What is it?”

Sonya pulls back, all at once. Hands still linked, Sonya stands and squeezes Yaz’s fingers. “Come home? Just for this afternoon and tonight?”

“Sonya, I can’t —” 

“I need you home, Yaz.” Sonya pleads, dragging Yaz back to visions of her childhood; of Sonya with a skinned knee and Yaz’s anxious heart thudding until she’s sure her little sister is okay. “I need my big sister back.” 

“Son—” 

“You can come back here tomorrow. I’ll even come and help, if you want, but just for tonight, come home? Please? We can watch a film, get a takeaway — whatever you want.” Sonya gives her hand a gentle tug, averting her gaze. “I miss you, sis.”

When Yaz glimpses her features in the blue-silver light, a fresh film of moisture is coating Sonya’s pupils. “Okay.”

Relief chases those tears away in an instant. “Yeah?”

“Just for this evening,” Yaz presses on, reluctant to brave the space (or lack thereof) outside the door. “I don’t sleep much these days, so I’ll probably end up back here by morning.” 

Sonya helps her to her feet; wobbly as they are, and smiles.  _ Properly _ smiles. Yaz trades a smaller upturn of her lips in secret. 

“You say that as if you won’t fall asleep five minutes into the film,” her sister jibes. 

—

Yaz can feel sleep pulling at her eyelids before Sonya even choses something to watch on her laptop. Really, she ought to find an uncomfortable position; ought to have asked to sit in the living room instead — rather than lie down on Sonya’s bed with her comfy pillows and cloud-like mattress. 

And, really, she shouldn’t have eaten so much pizza. The satisfying sensation of a full stomach after living off cheap meals between those skipped entirely leaves her drowsy and languid and far too vulnerable to slumber for her liking.

She can’t fight fatigue, though. Not when it hits her like a freight train with no mercy. 

Other than witnessing the way the screen casts Sonya’s bedroom aglow, Yaz fails to keep her eyes open for long enough to see the film begin. 

To Sonya’s mumbled  _ I told you so _ , Yaz gives in to that which cushions its warm hands around her heart and softly closes her eyelids. 

She doesn’t usually dream so much as refamiliarise herself with past memories and criticize herself for leads she failed to follow to their source most recently. Some memories linger and repeat more than others; especially those centred around the parting way she’d last seen the Doctor; of the look in her eye when Yaz reached for her. 

She thinks the words  _ get off me, Yaz _ are ingrained into her hearing forever more. 

This night, however, her brain takes mercy. 

Instead of reminders which tear her heart clean from her ribs and cast it aside, she’s graced with the look the Doctor offers up when she thinks up the perfect plan under pressure; the way her eyes crease in the corners and her dimples come to life when she laughs; the way she never fails to meet Yaz’s gaze with a quirk of her brow when she’s delivering a heartfelt speech to a stubborn enemy. 

Entwined with the cool breeze filtering through the blinds, the familiar, comforting hum and whirr of the TARDIS’ engines edge her towards wakefulness. In a hazy place between sleep and consciousness, she can’t decipher its authenticity. 

That is until an American voice greets the courtyard below her flat complex and echoes north. 

By her side, Sonya grumbles at the disturbance, but Yaz is on her sleep-numbed feet in seconds. 

When she skids towards the window, the royal blue of the Doctor’s TARDIS is a shock amongst grey and brown. With his gaze on her, none other than Captain Jack stands just before the open doors. 

And rather than in gleeful delight at his presence, Yaz’s gasp stems from the sight of the limp blonde cradled in his arms. 

“Could do with some help down here, Yaz!” Jack yells north. 

With not a moment's hesitation, Yaz sprints and sprints and  _ sprints _ like she’s never done before. 

Because for once, it feels good to run  _ towards _ something. And if that happens to be the woman she’s thought of and dreamt of and  _ lived for _ for the last ten months, then things might just be looking up after all. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!!! kudos & comments are always appreciated!!! <3


End file.
